I feel like someone is trying to play my skull like a musical instrument using those cute little hammers. Most of the ‘notes’ being in one area with a smattering of ‘notes’ scattered over the rest of the skull. All this after someone with me on one side of the face with a rubber mallet. So my eyeball feels like it has swollen up to twice its size and can’t fit in the eye socket anymore so it might pop out any second. This is on the same side as the large cluster of ‘notes’. And then someone has grabbed my entire head and is trying to lift the skull off the spine or is trying to lift my entire body by pulling up on my head. To top it all off, the same side that has the most pain also seems to have an earache.

I admit that when I see people parking in the handicapped parking spots that look perfectly able I have a twinge of annoyance. But I have two things that could enable me to get handicapped parking that are not visible so I know that you can’t know by seeing.

I have Plantar Fasciitis which has never really gone away. I have to wear ugly shoes all the time. I have some okay flats I can can wear for dress up but I can’t wear them to many days in a row, even with my inserts, without triggering a flare up. This pain is crippling and makes walking any distance a nightmare. I also have severely painful nerve pain in my thigh that developed when I was not overweight. So my doctor said that losing the weight gain that it and the Plantar Fasciitis resulted in may never make it go away.

My first doctor just kept telling me to lose weight and didn’t really treat anything. The nerve pain slowed me down and started the weight gain process and the Fasciitis developed as I was still trying to lose the weight and started a two year period where I could barely get around. I had to switch doctors until I found someone who would treat the problem problem instead of telling my weight was the problem, seeing how the weight gain was all after I developed the first issue and made worse by the second issue.

I could barely get from my car to the office at my job. I was in the lower parking lot. I could barely do my shopping. I was told I could have gotten a handicapped tag to park closer and when shopping I suppose I could have used the carts you sit in and drive around. I never did because of a stubborn streak inside that equated that with giving up and giving in.

But because of that I know that you can’t always see why someone has to park in a handicapped spot.

The reason I get annoyed with people parking in those spots is that I often see people who do not have the plates or the hang tags using those spots. I see these articles about people posting notes they find on their car when they park there. Some people do say, or even show, that they have the plates or the tags to park there. In those cases, the people putting notes on cars are totally in the wrong.

But some of these stories avoid saying if the person parking there didn’t have the correct plates or didn’t put up a hang tag. If you don’t have anything indicating that you need to use those spots, you shouldn’t get so upset when people complain about it. Admittedly, that doesn’t give other people the right to be nasty about it either. Being upset because people were nasty is one things. Being upset because people complained is another if you don’t have handicapped plates or a hang tag. If you are going to use those spots and don’t want people to think you are doing something wrong or being selfish and taking a spot someone might need then just fill out the paperwork and get the hanging tag at the very least.

My random thoughts and quotes are not completely random. They are random but taken from the quotes included on my tear-away calendar. I tossed them in a stack and when I started to flip through them, I saw a pattern or a story.

“Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn’t the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.”– Mike Royko

I don’t know who Mike Royko is, but I think he has it right. If on is facing the world with open eyes, then one would have trouble being that happy when faced with the crappy place the world happens to be. Or maybe they just aren’t smart enough to see what is before them. Ernest Hemingway seems to think so… “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

There is an odd truth in this. The more I know the more disillusioned I am. The more I know the more I tend to hate humanity as a whole. The more I know the less hope I have for this planet. The more I know the less hope I have for my own future.

The more I know the more I think the planet needs to start over. People are inherently selfish, which is the true root of all evil.

Dostoevsky must have felt a certain amount of this because he said, “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.”

There is a reason I don’t read the Russians. Too depressing.

The Russians seem to really relate to depressing things. A Russian Proverb is “If you wake up and you’re not in pain, you know you’re dead.” You can say the same thing in three words. Life is Pain.

This concept seems to fly right over the head of Paris Hilton who seems to think that “Everything bad that can happen to a person has happened to me.” I don’t think she truly understands the depth of bad things that can happen to people.

This has NOTHING to do with the post. It is just a great fantasy, day dream, fantasy concept floating around Facebook. I may turn it into a stitch pattern.

What today looked like:
1. Get up 1.5 hours early to go to work early.
2. Forget to take all medicine before leaving.
3. Lose phone so you can’t call roommate and ask him to bring them to work.
4. Dental appointment and get the first half of a root canal done.
5. Find the missing phone.
6. Be hungry but have no desire to eat once the dentist stuff wears off.
7. Spend rest of the work day in pain w/ headache.
8. Game night gets canceled.
This is hidden goodness disguised as much sadness. It means I could get home, take blood pressure meds, take pain meds, and I can go to bed early so I can have a better day tomorrow.

Not long ago, I wrote about the pain I’ve been suffering the past few years. Last Friday my doctor upped the pain medication for the nerve pain in my left thigh. It has been feeling MUCH better.

As for my feet, she recommended going up to night splints and physical therapy. While on my support group, I was recommended a website that lets you select what foot or leg condition you have and it will show you night splints, shoe inserts, and types of shoes designed just for those conditions.

I was looking at the picture of an ankle from the back. It was showing the bone structure in normal shoes and their shoes. The ‘normal’ shoe had the ankle curved inwards. It looked a bit like a curved spine. Their shoe showed a normal, straight, ankle. This made me think a bit.

I stood up and concentrated on how my ankle and feet are positioned when I stand normally. I then shifted a bit of my weight to the outside edges of my feet. I could feel my ankles pull slightly upward and straighten out. I realized that I’ve been standing and walking with a bad foot and ankle position. I walked through the apartment and could feel a noticeable improvement in my normal levels of good and heel pain.

I’ve had weak ankles as long as I can remember. I was always twisting and spraining them when I was growing up. I’m wondering if I’ve always been trying to grip with the bottom of my feet for more stability. Could that lead to an inflamed Plantar Facsiia?

I’ve spent all week concentrating on my weight distribution on my feet when I walk, trying to make sure I keep the ankle in a straight position. I do have a little bit of ankle fatigue. I’m sure it’s because I have to strengthen those muscles to work properly when the ankle is the proper position.

I’m still have a lot of foot and heal pain in the mornings. But it’s the pain through the day that is improving. It doesn’t hurt every single time I get up and down. I’m feeling a lot better. It is improving my mood.

In fact, today was the first day I felt good enough to go for a REAL walk.

Blowing in the Wind

A walk outside.

On real, uneven ground.

Where the sidewalks slant slightly.

On a hill where there are no flat sections.

There is only up and down.

It was windy and blustery.

Cool and cloudy.

Slightly Sprinkling.

It was the perfect walk weather.

There was only one problem

It smelled like wet dog.

I do feel a bit more pain in my feet and shins and butt and back. But I’m really out of shape now. I want to try to walk every day now. I hope I don’t pay for it tomorrow. I have a friend’s wedding and weekend trip for it coming up soon I’m down 2 lbs from last week and would love to lose another 5 lbs in the next two weeks. I think I can manage it if I can walk every day and watch what I eat. It would also be a pleasant surprise for my doctor if I was down 5 lbs by my next appointment.

Plantar Fasciitis: involves pain and inflammation of a thick band of tissue, called the plantar fascia, that runs across the bottom of your foot and connects your heel bone to your toes. Plantar Fascists is one of the most common causes of heel pain.

The source of my heel pain.

Plantar Fasciitis commonly causes stabbing pain that usually occurs with your very first steps in the morning. Once your foot limbers up, the pain of plantar fasciitis normally decreases, but it may return after long periods of standing or after getting up from a seated position.

Area affected by Meralgia Paraesthetica

Meralgia Paraesthetica: is numbness or pain in the outer thigh not caused by injury to the thigh, but by injury to a nerve that extends from the thigh to the spinal column.

This chronic neurological disorder involves a single nerve, namely the lateral cutaneous nerve of thigh (also called the Lateral femoral cutaneous nerve). The term meralgia paraesthetica comprises four Greek roots, which together denote “thigh pain with anomalous perception”.

Where the nerve goes through the hip. Women’s hips are different from men’s so it is more common in women than men.

Pain on the outer side of the thigh, occasionally extending to the outer side of the knee, usually constant.
A burning sensation, tingling, or numbness in the same area
Multiple bee-sting like pains in the affected area
Occasionally, aching in the groin area or pain spreading across the buttocks
Usually more sensitive to light touch than to firm pressure
Hyper sensitivity to heat (warm water from shower feels like it is burning the area)

In addition to the Plantar Fasciitis in both of my feet, I have Meralgia Paraesthetica in my left leg. I’ve had it longer than the PF. My first doctor told me to lose weight and it would go away. That was also the doctor that told me to change shoes and lose weight to make the PF go away and didn’t give me any other info on it. The new doctor says that a lot of women get Meralgia Paraesthetica and losing weight may not do anything. And since i was 85-90 lbs lighter when it started, that may not be a factor at all. In fact, between that and the PF starting a year or so later, these two conditions curtailing my ability to work out and stay active are a direct cause of my weight gain.

Anyway, It was so bad twice this week that it kept me up most of one night and all last night. So bad last night that I had to call in to work today. Oddly enough, the PF didn’t bother me at all this morning. But in the past month, I’ve had mornings so bad that a couple of times I was a little late for work and one morning I was nearly 2 hours late.

I got another appointment. The soonest they can get me in is next Friday afternoon.

I’m WAY behind on reading blogs. I’ve dumped a bunch of them into folders to read later. Some are in folders specific to the writer, the rest are in a massive folder called Word Press Saves. Maybe I’ll get caught up before I die.

Hmmmm, probably not. I seem to get behind once a week. So if I’m suddenly replying to things that are rather old, I’ve found some that I got behind on before and to which I have finally gotten.

In the mean time, an unabridged Clive Cussler book is fantastic for long drives. It was about 14 hours long. So it filled my drive each way, 7 hours there and back again. I really enjoyed Lost Empire, despite the huge stretch linking such diverse things that Cussler takes. Or maybe I like him because he is able to do it in a way that creates a roller coaster ride of an adventure store.

It is also why I’m one of the few people who seem to like the movie Sahara, based on his book of the same title. It’s a fun ride despite its flaws. It is a boy’s adventure story all grown up.

The stories sure make the miles fly past when driving. Driving up Iowa and though South Dakota is pretty boring. Rest stops are either too close together or to far apart.

One thing about long drives that really annoys me is when you have signs for gas and you can’t see anyplace from the road. There are some hills along this drive. Some small patches of forested area. But on the whole, not a lot of totally blind areas. Some signs do say the distance to the gas or food from the exit. But I always start to need gas at the towns for which they DON’T provide the distance.

Maybe it is a personal blind spot, but if I pull off the highway for gas, I want to still be in sight of the on and off ramps. I have this fear of getting lost in the middle of nowhere. Or maybe I just watched to many bad horror movies that start where the lone woman, driving across country, pulls into a hole-in-the-wall town for gas and/or food.

Speaking of movies, on the day in-between my two driving days, I watched some movies with grandma. We watched the original, and then the remake, of The Parent Trap. Both have problems but I’ve decided that this is one example where I like the remake better.

In the 1961 remake, I think they cut the girl’s hair short to try to make her look younger. Every time I watch it I can’t stop thinking about how much I hate the haircut. It never fails. It distracts me the entire way through. There is also the fact that the rough and tumble, John Wayne inspired, father (Mitch) is one again going to marry a prissy woman who doesn’t like the outdoors. Which, based on some lines in the movie, seems to be one of the major reason they split up. When the mother (Maggie) punches Mitch in the eye (very badly, no one hits like that) Mitch makes a comment that sounds like Maggie frequently resorted to violence to end arguments with him. The only character that is really amusing is actually the reverend who seems highly amused at the interpersonal relationships and how everything is playing out.

The second movie has a major problem with how strange it seems that a Brit that lives in England would send her daughter to a summer camp in the U.S. Everything else is much more funny. Of course, this was back when Lohan could still take direction and therefore could still act. And she still looked cute as a button. Red hair was so much better on her than that bleached out mess she has now. The ending is also slightly more believable in which the mother backs away and returns to England and this time her ex-husband comes after her, thereby correcting his first mistake of NOT chasing after where when she had hoped she would, years ago.

That is a terrible sentence. But I’m not fixing it. My back hurts too much.

Yep, my back.

Because another thing I learned this weekend was that it is possible to OVER massage a sore muscle. My grandmother has this massaging seat you put over a chair. It does rolling and kneading. It also has heat. You can also isolate it. I was hoping it would loosen up the perpetually sore muscles around my right shoulder blade. I’m not sure how long it lasts before it powers off. I used it through 2.5 power cycles. When I went to bed last night, I lay down and was going to use my percussion massager on the muscles since they were still sore. It hurt like hell. And it still does today.

Before leaving, that Hatfield’s and McCoy’s special came on. I wish I could have stayed to watch it. I got really interested in a matter of minutes. Now I shall have to go find it.